Monday, November 7, 2016

Duterte-style war on drugs gaining support in Indonesia

As the number of drug
users rises rapidly in Indonesia, public opinion is hardening
with support growing for a shoot-to-kill policy similar to the one in the
Philippines.

Indonesia
– one of 25 countries in the world that still carries out capital
punishment – has seen an increasing use of the death penalty since president
Joko Widodo took power in 2014, most of them for drug-related offences.

The
courts have sentenced 35 people to death since the start of the
year and has an increasingly long list of people on death row, according
to the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras).
The number is expected to grow as the government cracks down harder on the
drugs trade.

Bottom
of Form

“I
believe that Indonesia should be tougher on drug dealers,” said Vandana
Nanwani, a 23-year-old woman living in Jakarta.

“From the
outside, we see these executions as inhuman, but what we don’t see is the
people in rehabilitation centers. They are so addicted to drugs that they are
not able to do anything because they can’t live without it. Is that the future
of Indonesia?”

Last
year, Indonesia recorded an estimated 5.9 million drug users, an increase of 64% compared to
five years earlier, the global NGO network Drug Policy Consortium said.
Meanwhile, 33 die daily on average because
of drugs, according to the National Narcotics Agency (BNN).

In
Indonesia, as in the Philippines, crystalline methamphetamine is the primary
drug of concern, according to a UN report about its spreading across Southeast
Asia.

Other politicians
just talk. He takes action. Killing bad people is good

Philippine
president Rodrigo Duterte’s administration has executed around 4,000
people in a controversial war on drugs since taking office in June.

While the
Philippine campaign has raised alarm from several Western countries, including
the White House and United Nations, the president is highly popular among his
own people.

“God
bless him,” said Angela, a Filipino domestic helper living in Hong
Kong. “Other politicians just talk. He takes action. Killing bad people is
good.”

Now,
Indonesia seems to be flirting with the idea of launching a similar killing
spree.

The head
of Indonesia’s anti-narcotics unit, Budi Waseso, recently told a press conference that he’d like to copy
the Philippines’s policy in his own country. He added that Indonesia had
already begun to organize heavy weapons, drug-sniffing dogs and police
personnel to carry out a crackdown.

“The life
of a dealer is meaningless,” Waseso said, because a dealer “carries out mass
murder. How can we respect that?”

“If such
a policy [as that of the Philippines] were implemented in Indonesia, we believe
that the number of drug traffickers and users in our beloved country would drop
drastically.”

His
words echo those of Duterte who said he would be “happy to slaughter” millions of drug
addicts, likening himself to Adolf Hitler and his extermination of the Jews.

As
support grows in Indonesia for a shoot-to-kill policy, an opinion piece in Asean Today said that more
has to be done to battle the “endless invisible war.”

“If you
are a drug dealer, you should be shot,” said Amy, an Indonesia woman
living in Hong Kong. “But it has to go through the courts so no innocent people
are killed.”

She added
that many of her friends, however, support a Duterte-style crackdown where
suspected drug traffickers are simply shot dead in the street.

Professor
Tim Lindsey, director of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at
Melbourne Law School, said the war on drugs has become an important part of
president Widodo’s agenda since he first promised “no mercy” to drug offenders
in his 2014 election campaign.

A series
of executions of drugs offenders, mainly foreigners, has been accompanied by
inflammatory rhetoric about drug traffickers being mass murderers.

“There
seems to be strong popular support for this approach, although there are civil
society groups and intellectual leaders campaigning against it,” he said.

“It
remains to be seen how this debate will unfold. But while the war on drugs is
popular, there is little evidence of support for extra-judicial killings of
drugs suspects of the kind seen in Duterte’s Philippines.”

We can’t
shoot criminals just like that, we have to follow the rules

Lindsey added
that memories of the 31-year dictatorship of Suharto and the killing of
his opponents mean there would be widespread resistance to that level of
state lawlessness in Indonesia.

It’s not
the first time a Southeast Asian country has launched a widespread war on
drugs. In early 2003, Thailand’s then-prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra,
announced a crackdown, saying: “In this war, drug dealers must die.”

A
spokesperson for the National Narcotics Agency tried to play down Waseso’s
pro-Duterte declarations by stating that Indonesian law forbids a
Philippines-style police offensive against drugs dealers because “we can’t
shoot criminals just like that, we have to follow the rules.”

Nevertheless,
Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW), said he’s
concerned over the comments by the anti-narcotics chief and the increased use
of the death penalty against drug traffickers.

“We need
to be vigilant to the potential threat that Duterte’s willingness to trash the
concept of rule of law as part of a so-called ‘war on drugs’ might be wrongly
perceived as a model by Indonesian police,” said Kine, who oversees HRW’s work
in Indonesia and the Philippines.

“The fact
that Jokowi has embraced the use of the death penalty as ‘shock therapy’ against
drug trafficking, despite the fact that the alleged deterrence effect of the
death penalty has been repeatedly debunked, underscores the danger of simple
and brutal government ‘solutions’ to the very complex problems of drug use and
criminality.”